I woke up Tuesday morning to rain, and seriously contemplated blowing off the morning run. Crawling out of a warm bed to go for a run in the dark in hard enough, but it's just that much harder when it's raining out. Still though, I'd planned on meeting with Kemboi and had missed a couple runs with him the last couple days, so I didn't want to ditch him if he was running in the rain. I realized later on that this wasn't a very logical train of thought because of the regularity with which Kenyans avoid doing anything in the rain. I ran up to the intersection and waited for Kemboi for a minute or two then, after talking with a matatu director who knew him, went to the compound where he lived to see if I could find him. No one was else seemed to be around, so I decided to just head home. Considering that I was finishing an aborted morning run in the rain and the dark after not meeting the guy I had hoped to, I was in a pretty good mood. The amount that the Kenyans avoided the rain was interesting to me, coming from Seattle where you would quickly turn into a hermit if you tried to avoid doing anything in the rain. I guess the situation is somewhat different here because the number of dirt roads means that travel is more difficult in the rain than in the US, and I've heard people say the traffic gets pretty treacherous in the rain, but still.
Tuesday at school no school work or regular classes happened as usual. The day before the winning "house" had been announced, and today they would have a party as a reward. The tally for determining the winning house is determined by "good marks", which students get for helping teachers, going out of their way to help someone, or anything of that nature a teacher wants to reward. Also factored into determining the winning house is their performance on exams and during Sports Day. That party took the whole afternoon, and as far as I could tell there wasn't much of anything going on during the morning. A couple of eighth graders came in to talk to me and, since I was on my computer, I ended up showing them some of the pictures on my computer of the landscape in Montana. They were impressed by the mountains and lakes, the landscape of the Rockies is a lot different from the mountains here, and in my opinion the mountain views are a lot more beautiful there. Most of the pictures I had were really scenic views from out camping, including some phenomenal shots from a trip into the Pintler Mountains a couple summers ago that I didn't even go on, and I worried that I was giving them a pretty unrepresentative snapshot of what things looked like over there, but at least they got to see a glimpse of what the mountains there look like. They wanted to look at my music too, which I was happy to let them. I really don't listen to much of the same music they listen to, I think partly because of age and cultural differences, but also because I have a pretty off beat taste in music and don't listen to very much new pop music, which seemed to be the main thing they listen to. Since they had the whole morning off I showed them an episode of Flight of the Conchords, but it seemed to me that much of it was lost on them, I'm not sure if that's more because of age or cultural differences. All of the TV shows here seem pretty terrible to me. All the shows here are either Nigerian or Mexican, with the Mexican ones being originally in Spanish and roughly dubbed over in English. Those honestly remind me a little bit of the Vintage 21 videos, both in quality of the dubbing over and the quality of the acting. Most people I've talked to agree that the shows here are pretty poor, but lots of people still watch them. I wonder if they see something I don't or if they just watch them because that's what's available.
The kids who didn't have the party were just set loose for the afternoon while the others had the party. The system feels a little weird to me to just leave ¾ of the kids outside while you throw a party for the winning group, but I understand the reward for achievement they are trying to demonstrate to the kids. It also surprised me they were willing to turn that many kids loose for that long with basically no supervision, but overall there has been less supervision of kids during breaks than I would think necessary and things still seem to run pretty smoothly. I wondered if some of the kids who were at the party wouldn't mind just going out to play for the afternoon, but I didn't hear any sentiment to that effect from the kids. It also seemed to me a bit wasteful to have a day of the kids coming to school where, from what I saw, nothing really happened except a party for a quarter of them for half the day. After lunch I went out to play with the kids that weren't having the party, and I wondered how long we would play since they had the whole afternoon off. Normally we had about 40 minutes to play then the bell would ring and the kids would reluctantly head in for class. Today we kept playing into the afternoon, and I could tell some of the kids were running out of steam/attention. After we had been playing for over an hour there were about 20 kids that were really playing, at any given time about 10 kids standing around talking/arguing/playing with dirt (think little league outfielders), and probably five kids climbing on the goal post, which I kept an eye on to make sure I wouldn't have to explain how some kid had managed to paralyze himself while I was out there playing with them. I tired of the game myself, but some sort of paternal instinct discouraged the idea of leaving all these kids out here playing by themselves, even though that must be what normally happens. After a while a kid came to me saying he had cut his foot, which he definitely had, though not too bad, but it was bleeding pretty steadily and I figured it would be good for him to head in and get it patched up. I told him to head in, but he was hesitant, I think because he was worried about getting in trouble for coming in while the party was going, so I headed in with him. The party the winning house in the classroom area was done and they were moving over to the cafeteria for some cake. I took the kid over to the secretary for him to get a bandage, but it looked to me like they just sent him out to keep playing. I had been a little bit surprised I hadn't seen more cut up feet for the amount kids run around without shoes on, but I wondered if it happened pretty regularly and just wasn't seen as much of an issue, it was just something that happened.
As I headed back out I ran into Roger and he told me to come over to have cake, which I was happy to do because I was pretty tired of being out in the field. We headed into the cafeteria where all the kids had been loaded up a plate of sweets similar to jolly ranchers, something like flavorless cheetoes, and popcorn. This was the most junk food I had seen since I'd been here, and I must say it didn't hold a candle to American junk food. It's been both a good thing and a bad thing that I haven't really had any candy since I've been here. It's great for getting in shape and training for cross country and I'm eating super healthy, but I really miss having some chocolate or sugar from time to time. After everyone had food and was seated a couple of the teachers gave speeches about how the kids had earned this and the teachers were proud of them, but also lectured them about how they needed to work hard to get this again. Overall the speeches seemed pretty stern to me considering the occasion, with some of the teachers saying more about what they needed to do and what they needed to fix to win again than praising the kids for their efforts. Maybe it wasn't really out of place considering that most things about the school system here have seemed pretty harsh and unforgiving to me. Most of the teachers spoke, and the speeches seemed to drag on to me. I thought again of if some of the kids would prefer to be outside playing rather than listening to the teachers tell them how hard they need to work.
Earlier in the day I had called Kemboi to ask about where he was that morning, and he was surprised that I had gone for a run in the rain. Sure enough, he had just slept in and waited until it wasn't raining and ran at 10. Since I knew where he lived now, we agreed to meet at his house at 5 in the evening to run. When we got home I got my running clothes on and headed up there. He lives in a group of houses all inside of a metal front gate, so I knocked on the front gate, unaware that I could just open the door and head in. One of the women out cleaning clothes reluctantly opened the door with an appropriately confused look on her face, and when I asked directed me to Kemboi's house. Kemboi invited me in as he got ready for the run. This was another case of fighting against the instincts my parents had instilled in me growing up, going into the house of a person you had met once was definitely on the list of things to be avoided at just about all costs. But I had grown more and more comfortable with the area, and with the new experiences in Kenya in general to where it was easier to distance myself from the lessons I had learned growing up in the US. Kemboi's "house" was one room, as were the rest of the houses in the complex. You had to duck out of the way of clothes that were hanging on lines between the houses across the concrete communal area to get to his front door. He had his bed, a couch, several chairs, and a small TV crammed in there, along with a pile of dishes and cooking supplies in one corner. The kitchen, bedroom, and living room were all just overlapping corners of this space. Metals hung all the way around the room (which isn't that far, but still) along the ceiling, along with running hats and a couple pictures of him. I examined the medals and asked him about some of them. They were all from international marathons and half marathons, and these weren't participant ribbons. He had won a couple races in Malaysia and had a couple top 3 finishes elsewhere in Asia and Europe. This was another case of expanding my global perspective, realizing the being in the United States, we don't even necessarily ever see the fastest runners in the world on our continent. Kemboi was a talkative guy, and as we (mostly he) talked I begin to think that I'd mistaken his talkativeness for cockiness. He spoke matter-of-factly of the places he'd run and what the races had been like. So far the runners I had met had struck me as pleasant, but quiet and shy, and that wasn't the case of Kemboi at all. He was animated and opinionated, and as we took off on our run I was excited about running with him because any question I asked him had the potential to set him off on a story or a rant about training, racing, Kenya, or life in general.
Rather than heading up the main road the way I had always gone, we crossed the road and walking along a long concrete block that looked to me like it might be used for irrigation and across about the ricketiest bridge that you could imagine and along a path through the houses. As this point we started jogging at just faster than a walk, and Kemboi said this was to loosen up a little bit. The path we were on took us up to a side road, which we turn on and Kemboi announced that this was where the run would actually start. I braced myself to get ready to take off at the kind of pace I imagined a 2:07 marathoner must run for his easy runs, but we picked up the pace just slightly and were still moving along at a slow jog. I spent the next several minutes waiting for the pace to pick up, but it never did. If he ran a 2:07 marathon that meant his pace for 26.2 miles was about 4:50 per mile. My race pace for a cross country 10k (6.2 miles) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5:30 per mile, so it's safe to say that if we were running at paces relative to our race pace he would be running at least a minute per mile faster than me. Maybe this is the secret to Kenyan training, I thought. But at a very fundamental level it doesn't follow that you can suddenly run so comfortably at faster than 5:00 miles because you've ran all your training miles at 8:00 pace (Warning to non-runners: the rest of this post and the next couple will get into considerable observations and ramblings about distance training, so it may be somewhat dry if this isn't your cup of tea. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, if it's of use to you then go ahead and read, but if not throw it out immediately). I asked him if he usually ran this slow and he explained that this was a "speed walk", which is what he always did in the evening. The purpose of these runs was to burn fat and build strength, he said. In fact, when I had to jump off the road to take a dump part way through the run, when I came back he said that was a good sign, that my body was getting rid of the extra fat because of the run. I'm not an exercise science nut, but that still sounded pretty backward to me, and I found that a lot of what Kemboi said seemed pretty backward, and some of it sounded downright ridiculous. There were a couple things that I was pretty quick to dismiss, but as I thought about things more, I came around to thinking that it doesn't matter if it's correct, because it's part of the training plan and though process of a 2:07 marathoner. I can bring forward whatever evidence I want that my view or though process of the strategy of different runs is more correct, but Kemboi's evidence will be the prize money he wins in New York, and I care a lot more about running fast than I care about biology, so if there's a disagreement between the fastest runners in the world and the scientists that don't have any results to show other than the lab results, I think I will tend to side with the fast runners. Basically, I don't care what's technically correct, I care what makes you run fast, whether it's correct or not, because for me that's the definition of correct.
I was delighted with how eager he was to answer my questions, but I never got short, direct answers, and often the answers didn't have much of anything to do with the question I asked. That didn't bother me too much though, because I didn't even necessarily know what questions to ask, I just wanted to hear his thoughts on training and figure out what he did and what Kenyans do in general. I thought back to conversations I've had or discussion boards I've seen online of the American running community trying to pin down what it was that made the East Africans so dominant and now I had the prime opportunity to try to understand what they do first hand, and even do it with one of their elites. We did enough runs together over the course of the week that I don't remember too clearly what we talked about on what runs, so probably the next blog post I'll devote just to talking about the runs we did and the wisdom Kemboi imparted to me on those runs, which I think will also make it easier for those of you who don't give two hoots about this to skip over it. Kemboi was very amused by the idea that people would assume I was some elite European runner that had come to train with him. I added to it saying that if I ran alone people just though I was a foolish lost little white boy, but running with an elite marathoner changed me into an exotic elite runner that was serious enough about training to come train with the Kenyans. Kemboi exclaimed several times during the run about how if I kept training with him I would be strong in a week. If I run with him for a week my legs will fall off, I thought. There didn't seem to be any problem in his mind with a random walk-on Division II college runner jumping into training with a world-class marathoner and keeping up. In fact, "It's no problem" and "It's OK" were probably his favorite phrases, and they surfaced probably at least every couple minutes, and if I ever complained about my legs feeling bad or needing to take a day off, that was the standard response. As we were finishing the run he suddenly exclaimed, "I like you!" and I responded that I was very grateful and excited about getting to train with him.
We had run 70 minutes, some on roads I was familiar with, but had connected them with roads that had previously been some of endless unknown roads that meandered off through the fields into the unknown. Several times kids yelled at me or came to run with us as they usually did, though I think they were more hesitant now that I was running with Kemboi, and people yelled at me less in general, which I can only attribute to the change of perception from being a silly looking shaggy lost kid to some sort of imported elite runner. When the kids did come run with us, Kemboi didn't seem to mind at all but if I said something or encouraged them then he would sometimes too. I'm pretty sure kids never come out to run with elite runners in the US, but I don't think kids come out to run with Kemboi if I'm not there. He mentioned when one of the kids was running with us about how important it was to get kids running early and to encourage them, not sounding much different from what I would expect (and hope) anyone that's invested in the running community in the US would say.
After the run we did Kemboi's stretching and strengthening routine, which took maybe two minutes and we did most of it as we were walking back down the path toward his house. We stretched our calves and hamstring, did a variation of some leg swings, and then a funny shoulder and hand strengthening one where we basically held our arms over our heads and rapidly opened and closed our hands. He invited me back to his place to grab some water before I headed home, which I was happy to oblige. He poured glasses of water and then added a little bit of concentrated fruit juice to give it some sugar, basically what I considered to be a low-tech Gatorade. We both pounded down the first glass and then drank another one more leisurely. We also had some bread and tea, which seemed to me to be an integral part of the post-run routine for him, and relaxed a little bit while he put on a national geographic video on his tiny TV. It occurred to me that for the time he was in Eldoret he lived a pretty solitary life. He trains and lives alone, and during the day goes into town alone. He has a girlfriend, which from talking with him I it seems to me he started going out with in large part just so he would have some companionship for the time he was here. He's friends with a lot of the runners, but explained to me that he was pretty hesitant to show them where he lived because he said often they would let other people know who would come to rob him, which seemed interesting to me considering how willing and eager he had been to invite me to his home. I can't remember what all we talked about this night and what we talked about later in the week, so I'll include most of that stuff in the next post.
I felt pretty good after the run, and I was excited that I might actually be able to train a decent amount with Kemboi. This was one of the dreams I had had for the trip, a best case scenario, and it was really happening. The next day at school would be the pack up day, and considering how lackadaisical today had been I decided to skip to be able to run with Kemboi at 7:00. With school ending I would be able to concentrate on training, something I hadn't really done for the whole trip. During my standard summer since college started the main focus of the summer was getting in as good of shape as possible for the cross country season in the fall, and I think this is probably the first year where that isn't my primary goal for the summer, and it feels kind of strange. However, as I said when I was deciding to go on this trip, it would be good for bringing closure to my running career because either I would get in great shape and be inspired running with the Kenyans and end my career by having a great senior season then riding off into the sunset or I would have another bummer of a season and I figured if I can't have a good season after training in Kenya it's time to call it quits anyway.
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